


oh let me in or let me out

by CkyKing



Series: be gay, do (war) crimes [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (if the summary didn't already make it clear lmao), Character Study, Claude/M!Byleth, M/M, Magical Realism, Multi, POV Second Person, Spoilers, because you better believe we're going there, byleth-centric, old religions and languages are involved, shifts between 2nd and 3rd person, we also get a peek into jeralt's past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23415802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/pseuds/CkyKing
Summary: When they are finally gone, you push past your exhaustion and heartsickness, your rage clasped around your throat like a collar of salt and iron.Without, you are just a boy. With it, you are indestructible.You think,my mother named me for a lord of hell.You think,my father carved me from wood and steel.You think,I beheld death and did not flinch.[Jeralt finds out about Those Who Slither in The Dark, and some things change. Others, of course, stay the same, such as Claude's tendency to play with fire. And wouldn't you know it, Byleth is the brightest goddamn flame in all of Fódlan]
Relationships: Jeralt Reus Eisner & My Unit | Byleth, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Series: be gay, do (war) crimes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615672
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	oh let me in or let me out

As far back as he can remember, Byleth has always had a perfect posture, the line of his back long and unbroken, shoulders back and head straight. Looking at him, Jeralt can almost see the string pulling his vertebrae ever upward, little toy-soldiers on an unseen chessboard: _pawn_ to _S3_ , _knight_ to _L5_ , _queen_ to _C1;_ bones clacking together like dominoes falling down, one after the other. 

It’s almost too easy imagine, because Byleth is nothing if not controlled, feelings tightly coiled in the clockwork pulse at his wrist, snarled in its working to keep them from overflowing.

Even as a child, he was never overtaken by the characteristic fits of pique common at such an age, never slouching, never relaxing, as if the core of him refused to settle, to relax and inhabit his own skin and kept him instead at the ready, forever seeking the nebulous piece missing from its whole.

Oh, that is not to say that he is incomplete in any way - Jeralt would happily slaughter anyone who would ever be foolish enough to imply it - but that he always looks unmoored, like gravity needs to exert itself the slightest bit more in order to keep him from floating away to the vastness of the skies.

His son, his clever fingers, his bright eyes, the genteel length of him: forever looking to the future, ever-hungry and ever-wanting, content but never truly satisfied. He is so much like his mother that Jeralt nearly wants to weep from the loss at times, in the dead of night as Byleth leans against him and follows the abstract shapes he traces in the sky with glittering eyes, trusting him to hold his weight and keep him from harm, because Jeralt is his father, and it is his role to teach, and to shelter.

And Jeralt _is_ his father, for all that Byleth is the near-mirror image of his mother, so much so that he at times doubts his hand in shaping such an impossible being. The bend of his littlest finger when he clutches at his tunic, the constellation of freckles that blooms across the bridge of his nose, the furrow of his brows when he focuses, his near-immunity to extreme cold and acute distaste for dry heat: precious little signs that settle Jeralt and deepen his worries in equal measure.

Because Byleth deserves only the best: small, glimmering jewels fit for magical use; silver platters of roasted figs drizzled in honey; a small house by the sea, remote and far, far away from prying eyes.

Travel-worn and battle-scarred, forever on the move and always vigilant, it is a far cry from what he wishes he could give him. For a brief moment, he contemplates surrendering him to nobles acquaintances, finding him a place away from battle and strife—away from him.

The rage that wells up in answer, bitter and vicious, nearly punctures his lungs in its suddenness, and he lets the idea go, scalded and vaguely guilty from even considering such a thing.

_I love you_ , he thinks fervently, watching the fragile line of his spine, naked and deadly, a sword drawn against the world, and places a gentle hand on the scar marring its length, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing in fear of proving his moniker true. _I love you, and I have failed you._

Having him reach back, the son who he loves so much and yet could never relate to, is his greatest gift, and his greatest curse. His fingers burn beneath the trusting curve of Byleth’s palm, but he does not let go—cannot bring himself to.

_It was all for you_ , he wants to press into the raised line of flesh, bone white against the rich tan inherited from the grandfather he’ll never know. _You’re the reason why I get up every morning and go to sleep every night._

_They call me the Bladebreaker but it doesn’t matter, because I am your father first._ His hand linger against his will for a fleeting moment before slipping out of Byleth’s, trailing against his skin before coming back to his side, nerveless. Useless.

_I love you_ , the words catch in his throat, like a bone he cannot break, a heart he cannot rend. The weight of his secrets deaden his tongue, and he can only watch as the moment slip between his fingers, as Byleth shrug on his shirt and armor in quick succession, the militaristic precision of his limbs, the layers of his black shell coming alive before his eyes.

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I’m sorry._

He does not say any of this, only nods and keeps his mouth shut like the coward he is, deep down where all of his most important possessions live.

And Byleth—Byleth is his greatest treasure, and his greatest failure.

(But that is a lie, isn’t it? His father has always been too close, skin paper-thin to the matters closest to his heart, Byleth and his mother chief among them. It is only with distance in any of its many forms that such things can be seen clearly, and distance is what the Bladebreaker can ill-afford, both on an off the battlefield. 

Byleth, on the other hand…

The intrinsic line between life and death and the crushing weight of duty are his mother’s blessings, and her patient and even gaze allows him to bear them both. Such things he is born knowing, and such things he will walk to his death with.

It is with such knowledge that he weighs his father’s perceived sins in hands as solid and unwavering as his father’s heart:

Byleth may not grow up safe, may not grow up as protected as his father would wish him to be, but he grows up loved; so, so _loved_. And he knows it, with every revolution of his clockwork pulse, with every battle he claws his way through.

How could he resent Jeralt for this, for cherishing him enough to keep him, when lesser men would have abandoned him at the first occasion?

So he grows up with a sword in hand, with the weight of his own mortality held close and the truth of his father’s love even closer.

It does not matter that his father never says the words, never spell it out as precisely as his battle plans or as concisely as his praises, because he can see it as clear as day, as easily as the stars he was taught the names of before he could even walk.

_I love you too_ , he presses back into his father’s callused hands, spine straight, head high, before heading back to battle.

He is his father’s son after all, and peace was never an option.)

***

Byleth learns strategy at his father’s feet, one hand tangled in the folds of Jeralt’s bright tunic and the other on the hilt of his first dagger, blue as hope, silver as death.

For all that the subtleties of motives and emotions escape him, the heart of men blooms in front of his eyes, fed by a kind word, their chests sticking out with the sunlight-bright sliver of praise his father dispenses with a slight smile and the unmistakable weight of his sincerity.

Honesty, he learns, is the key to many things if only it is wielded correctly. In inexperienced hands, it is a bludgeon, a destructive force to wreck the carefully erected barriers instilled by society from the cradle. In others, it is a stiletto, the iron-wrought death of ego loosened with a slip of the tongue, a single blow straight to the core, sharper than any arrows and lighter than a summer breeze.

Jeralt is loved and respected by many because his bluntness is a trusted asset, the bedrock of many a fondations, especially in the knights he had trained and raised to glory himself. But it is his silence that is treasured, the slightest of pauses that soften what would have a deathblow from any other; his understanding, and his patience.

Because his father is not especially kind, not by any measure, but what he is, is _fair_ , and such things beget respect even in those who see no value in fairness, in honesty.

And so Byleth learns about patience, and fairness, and sincerity from his father; learns that strategy begins well before the battle is even a possibility, a storm brewing on the horizon. 

Strategy begins in trust, in respect, in the men and women under your command, how they follow you by choice and not obligation, how their lives are yours to bear and how they will repay kindness for kindness, insult for insult, tenfold, a hundredfold if need be, because, in the end, humanity is nothing but the connections you forge with others, the hand you extend when others would abstain, the hurt you spare when you can, because life is already painful enough on its own.

So yes, Byleth learns of strategy and humanity at Jeralt’s feet, with his mother’s eyes and his father’s frown, but battle—battle is another story entirely.

***

“Little lord,” he calls you when you meet for the first time, voice smoky and rough with a faint undertone you can’t quite parse out, not yet. Later, much later, you will think it amusement, or shock, or mockery but by then it will already be too late. 

You’re always too late when it comes to those things.

Still, as a child, perhaps six or seven summers if you had to put an age to it, you didn’t quite know how to answer and so you didn’t, your small features scrunching briefly in a there-and-miss-it frown before settling back into their usual placidity, the only sign of your wariness worn into the crease of your fingers, clenched in your father’s cuisses.

But you don’t think this man, with his sharp eyes and knife-slash smile, will be as easy to misdirect as the others, not with how intently he focuses on what you know is a minuscule movement before settling back to the corner of your eyes like he can read the secrets etched there.

You can’t fault him, not really, not with how intently you study him in return.

His eyes, you notice first, a burnished, almost copper red shot through with amber, sharp and watchful, hawkish in their intensity but all the more striking for it. _He laughs often_ , you notice next, idly, wonderingly, because most of the people you know are either mercenaries, who generally have not had much to laugh about in their lives, or nobles, who should but do not care for it. And so you can’t help but marvel at the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth, the crow’s feet like small nicks in the warm bronze of his skin, darker than yours or your suspiciously silent father’s copper, predator-still at your side but for the hand resting at the back of your neck. 

Finally, his eyes stop flitting across your face and something like true amusement lifts the corner of his lips, unlike his earlier greeting that was more akin to a wolf’s bared teeth than anything you have seen in a human yet.

“My, my, Captain, what changeling have you been nursing at your breast…”

“ _Yorrick._ ” Your father snaps out, his voice a whip that cracks against your back, forcing you still and straight at his side. Almost immediately however, his hand squeezes comfortingly and you release the breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

The stranger, you realize belatedly, reacts in much the same way, and something like contrition flashes in the measured blinks of his eyes before fading away, leaving only sharp-edged derision behind.

“Apologies, Captain, I was just...shocked,” he drawls out, making it clear to all three of you that he was nothing of the sort, “But yes, I can definitely work with this.”

“So you accept?” Jeralt presses, intent on the other man, hand tensing in your hair, and in a flash of insight, you realize where you learned this habit from.

“So distrustful,” he replies with another edged smile and a hand in his cropped-short salt and pepper hair, “Yes, indeed, I’ll join your company again, Captain, just like the old times.”

Only then does your father uncoil, tension flowing out of his whole body like a snake coming to rest, much more than what you had observed previously. The so-called Yorrick does much the same, and you know intimately, right then and there, that this was the answer to another conversation that you were completely oblivious to, and can’t help but wonder:

Who, in truth, is Yorrick?

***

“An old friend,” your father tells you that night, the dancing light throwing his shadow in sharp relief against the material of your shared tent.

You don’t have to see him to know he is not telling the whole truth and so you merely wait, listening to the sounds of the company making merry outside, the rewards of a job well done echoing in the night like the last sparks of the flickering lantern above you.

His heavy sigh stirs the fine hair at the top of your head, and only because you are his son can you divine the smile hidden underneath it.

“Silence won’t work on everyone, you know,” he chides you lightly before dropping down behind you unceremoniously, not caring about his image whatsoever when it is only the two of you. You follow him down just as readily, habit drawing your knees to your chest so you have an easier time encircling them, tucking your chin in their hollow to hide your answering smile.

“But it does with you.” you respond simply, stifling the urge to sink back into the hand he lays on your head in mock admonishment; you come by the nickname of _piscín_ honestly after all.

He doesn’t answer verbally this time.

Instead, you feel the slide of wood through your hair until, one, two, the mass of it comes tumbling down on your shoulders, the wood-fresh scent of cedar filling the air between you as it does every night.

_“Cedarwood and cherry, so you may find your way to me,”_ you half-sing under your breath, remembering what he had told you with a faraway look and a song on his lips before beckoning you close, awkward and hesitant and so unlike your confident father that you hadn’t been able to help your curiosity. The pair of hairpins he had pressed into your hands, one carved from cherry and the one from cedar, had filled your heart with such warmth that you thought it would burst, so full of light you were that you thought you simply cease to exist and float away on the breeze.

Because you may have been strange, may have had strange half-thoughts fill your mind with such clamor that you couldn’t help but flinch with a blade close to your neck, as benign as the intent may be, but your father _accepted it_. It is this more than the gift itself that had lifted your heart so, and you cannot help but run your fingers over the carvings that line them, roughly-hemmed but painstakingly careful: marigold and daisies, forget-me-nots and spiderwings, the song of your people right there at your fingertips.

There are rituals, you know, that must be carried out before carving a tree, and you do not know them, not yet, but you can picture your father following them; so clearly that you can almost touch him: the way of the trees worn smooth by a thousand hands, your body shaped by an hymn carried on over generations; from mother to son, from seed to tree. A silent melody that guides your steps through forests and streams, the clear whistle strung from your ribs, from the hollow of your bones where wind nestles before taking flight.

Your father’s people are long gone, but you carry them with you always.

Behind you, your father hums, low in his throat, acquiescing wordlessly and teaching you at the same time: take a deep breath and pause, so intention may settle deep in your lungs and leave your voice high and clear; _these_ for a cedar’s blessing and _this_ for the cherryblossoms’ forgiveness, a tumble of notes you mimic like a songbird fledgling, hanging tight on the bass tones your father trails behind him like shining stones to show you the way.

All the while, his fingers cards through your hair, working out tangles with a steady hand and a steadier voice, smoky and low and all for you. Soon, he will unearth one of your most valuable possessions, a silver brush dotted with obsidian and dragonsblood, radiant greens and blacks arranged in a great wing curved protectively around the delicate S carved in its handle, the only thing you have left of your mother, and your nightly ritual will be at an end.

But for now, you cling to his voice and allows yourself to be borne away, up and up to the mountains you haven’t had the chance to see, flying high above the clouds and away from the din you can distantly make out from outside, lost in your own world as you are.

It is only as he finishes brushing your hair and prepares to join his men that he finally answers your question, slowly, almost reluctantly:

“Yorrick was...one of my men, a long time ago. He was of the best damn archers I’ve ever seen, but his mind...He can teach you many things that I’d be unable to.”

The words catch in his throat, thick as honey and just as cloying, so unlike the songs he was teaching you but a moment ago.

You don’t mention how much older Yorrick seems to be, much older than your father has any right to be, and he doesn’t offer more. There is a limit to how much he can be asked to reveal, your ever-secretive father.

Like clockwork, he stops at the hundredth brush stroke, carefully put away his last link to your mother and presses a bristly kiss to your temple, a last ghostly touch before he melts away into the night like he had never been.

You finish getting ready by yourself, the tent seemingly so much colder than a mere moments ago and, with a slight exhale, high and reedy, you plunge yourself into darkness.

That night, you do not dream at all.

***

“If you wish to learn the truth of a man’s deeds,” Yorrick tells you in a soft apparté, arm casually wrapped around your shoulder, “Watch his hands.” and with a nod, directs your attention to the nearest table where a group of dark-eyed men pass coin back and forth in a game of Five Queens, cards dancing nimbly between their lightly-callused hands.

“But if you wish to know his heart,” he continues, flicking a cutting glance at any whose stares dare linger more than a few seconds on your cloaked form at his side, “Then watch his eyes.”

So saying, he taps a deceptively slim finger against your collarbone, making you tilt your head toward the table immediately to your left where two men argue good-naturedly, ale sloshing out of their tankards with each of their wide gestures, unrestrained and full of laughter. But their eyes—they are flat and dead, trained on each other like they are facing a deadly viper instead of another man of flesh and blood. In this new light, each of their movements become akin to wolves slowly circling each other, teeth barred and ready to lunge.

This is how Yorrick teaches you: he takes you by the hand and drags you down to Fódlan’s dark underbelly the moment your father’s back is turned, taking it for the tacit approval it appears to be and running with it.

Silver-tongued and deadly, your impression of him has not changed; but your world...this he breaks apart between his fingers and widens until you feel dizzy with the change of perspective, at how small you had been looking until he sliced through your predictable life with his sharp-edged mockery and knowing looks.

Indeed, from that night on where your father’s voice drew you up and away, you see Yorrick more often than not. When not on the road, you are with him, nearly every waking moment spent under his piercing eyes, taking you apart with a glance and rebuilding you better and faster in his mind.

And your father...he grows more distant in the meantime, eyes lost in the distance. Oh, he is still there, of course; still wakes you up and puts you to sleep, still brushes your hair from your face and presses the back of his hand to your neck, but his spirit is leagues away, waiting, perhaps. Watching.

You could blame Yorrick for it.

In truth, you almost did, right in the beginning where your father took one look at the both of you and turned away as if the very sight wounded him. But Jeralt _was_ right in telling you how good he was, and so, ever-curious creature that you are, you took to him like fish to water.

Bow and blades and sheer knowledge he shows you glimpses of behind coy fingers before tucking them out of sight and making you work for them, waving them tantalizingly out of your reach. Your father gave you your first blade, taught you how to hold it; where to strike and where to wound; and then he did the same with the lance and the sword for all that he is in the business of breaking them. But it is Yorrick who polishes your understanding to a glossy sheen, pale and steely as your own eyes.

And so you follow close behind him, at his side whenever you are not at your father’s; even in battle, or rather, _especially_ in battle.

Because if you learn strategy at your father’s side, you learn battle at Yorrick’s.

There, he is transformed; a man possessed. The startling force of his personality is pressed down and tucked away, leaving only his eagle eyes and clever hands to assess and shoot down any stragglers. You are ever at his side as he dissects the skirmishes going on below you with a bird’s view and the keen knife of his intellect before hand-feeding them to you, drawing and quartering the terrain in neat boxes and leaving you to place the pieces in this life-sized game of chess.

And yet, somehow, he is always attentive to you, no matter the situation.

“Never too close and never too far,” he tells you serenely the first and only time you make the mistake of wanting to see your father’s handiwork from up close.

At his feet lie two bandits, fallen neatly where they lay with nary a sign but for the arrows sprouting from their eyes like sickly flowers, loosened with contemptuous ease before you had even realized the danger you were in.

“To me, little lord,” he had called you, longbow at his side and his eyes looking right past you to the flashes of steel and storm-dark hooves you could barely make out in the distance.

You scurried to his side then, somehow breathless for all that he stayed still and silent, him who had snuffed out the lights of those two men who had wished you harm, and he had touched a hand to the side of your neck, his pulse steady and calm against yours until you’d had no choice but to match it, beat for beat against his cool skin.

His eyes, you couldn’t help but notice as you both watched your father slaughter the hastily mounted ambush, were very sad.

This is what you learn on that day: one, that he will never, ever let you get hurt on his watch; two, that your father trusts him more than anyone you’ve ever known; and three, that for all that he mocks and ridicules everyone and everything, Yorrick has the softest heart you have ever had the privilege to touch.

***

You catch them arguing, one day, a few hours after a mishap that leaves you bleeding nearly from elbow to wrist. It is your own fault, of course; too eager were you to try and replicate the neat sleight of hand that Yorrick had shown you, a quick and easy way to change grips on a dagger or a shortsword that had left you galvanized and wanting to try it for yourself. Still, you should know by now that what he shows you may _seem_ easy, but it is more a testament of skill on his part than anything else.

It is the first time you get more than bruises and sore muscles since Yorrick had become your teacher; what Jeralt had feared from the very beginning.

Oh, of course he doesn’t say so, but your teacher is a harsh and exacting taskmaster. The speed at which your father had taken you away coupled with the thunderous look he had thrown his way could not paint a clearer picture if it tried.

Camille’s skills with a needle are unparalleled however, and with the willowbark and honey tincture they had spread over the wound afterward, it is nothing more than a dull throb easily pushed aside once covered by the clean linen bandage they carefully wound around it.

Still, the healer nearly manages to shove one of their vile pain-relieving teas down your throat before you manage to flee, using their distraction to duck out of their tent and scale up an accommodating oak at the edge of your current encampment.

You may or may not hide a smile at their heated cursing when they find you gone, so at odd with their soft and careful voice. And even if you do, that’s between you and the nightingale you now share a branch with, startled as it was by your nearly silent climb.

It really is too nice outside to spend it cooped up and at a healer’s mercy, you think serenely as you hear them draw away, probably in search of your father so he may (attempt) to talk sense into you. 

You wait until you cannot hear them anymore before you start humming, low and liquid, in an attempt to draw the curious fledgling closer. The task takes so much of your attention that you do not feel the time pass, too busy are you remembering your father’s lessons as you hum the same chord again and again in varying pitch and tones until you hear them sung back at you by the appeased bird. Too soon, however, does it devolve in a makeshift game of tag as your newfound friend flutters from branches to branches, occasionally pulling at strands of hair that had escaped your loose bun without your notice.

The wind playing in your hair and the dappled sun chase away the last of your aches as you play, and only occasionally do your reawaken them by forcing your wrist in the motions of the underhanded pass that had landed you in this position in the first place.

This content state of relaxation is probably why the heated whispers coming from the base of your current perch startle you so.

“Still not careful enough, little lord,” Yorrick’s voice chides in your mind before the real Yorrick’s angry reply replaces it:

“Gods be damned, Jeralt, it was an accident!”

Hidden amidst the folliage, you can’t help but lean forward at the uncharacteristic display of emotion, intrigued.

“Excuse me if I don’t believe that, _Talon ._ ” Your father’s voice lashes back, quiet but intense. Only your quick thinking lets you muffle the instinctive gasp this tone wants to pull out of your throat, so shocked are you by the icy wrath coating his voice.

“Oh, are we resorting to name-calling now, _Straymaker_ ?” If Yorrick was angry before, he is furious now, this much you can tell by his crisp diction, his accent smothered under the purposeful over-enunciation, “Need I remind _you_ that you called back?”

“Like you would let me forget it.” Jeralt bites back, “Believe me, I would have picked anyone else over you if I could have.”

A pause next, which, you realize dimly, is because your teacher – the sharp-tongued wordweaver you had come to know – is actually speechless. Rage or shock, you can’t quite know, not when your hiding spot only allows you glimpse of their hair, of the rigid lines of their bodies.

But his silence does not last long.

What follows next is a stream of words you can’t understand, each flowing seamlessly into the other in a language you had only heard snatches of before, peppered in Yorrick’s speech like so many jewels in the dark sands of Fódlan’s common tongue.

“You called me back here,” he continues next, voice thick with tension and...hurt? but that couldn’t be, could it..? “and you asked me to take your son as—”

“Yes, _my_ son, and don’t you—”

“Take him as,“ Yorrick speaks right over him, something you’ve never _ever_ heard done to your father, not if they wanted their pride intact, “my _tilmīd_ and you think that I’d harm him meaninglessly?”

This time, it is your father’s turn to remain silent. Unlike him, however, your teacher capitalizes on the momentary weakness.

“You made him _mine_ that day, Captain, and don’t you forget that.”

_Captain_ hangs in the air between them, charged and heavy, hinting at a depth of shared experiences that you had not even realized existed, and now more than ever do you feel its weight on your shoulders. How must it feel, then, to the two of them...you can’t even imagine.

“I didn’t mean to—” Jeralt tries to correct, faced with the truth of his implications, unwilling as they may be. Knowing Yorrick, however, they most certainly were not, as limited as your perspective may be on the subject.

And Yorrick, Yorrick is having none of it.

“Of course, you Fódlanites never mean anything, do you?” Bitter and acrid, disappointment slides heavy on your tongue, its taste made even fouler by its secondhand nature, so saturated with it is the air between them.

“Sentiment will be the death of us,” Yorrick’s voice whispers in your mind as you listen to him make his first and last mistake in this battlefield where he should be king.

_Not like this_ , you want to tell him. Accusations will never net anything more than scorn and the heaviest of silences from your father. No, silence itself is a far kinder bond and only with it will he open up, so much like the snowdrops native to the mountains both of your hearts are fashioned from. But Yorrick’s heart is too soft yet, and so he doesn’t realize—but you do. You would know best after all.

And as you feared, Jeralt clams down. Like the sun rises to the east and sets to the west, like birds chase its warmth on desperate wings, he draws himself back until he is granite, marble, moonglass, there in all but spirit.

His voice, when replies after an agonizing pause, his talent turned back on itself by the wounded pride wrapped around his shoulders in a ragged cloak, is a frozen arrow aimed straight at the chinks in Yorrick’s armor.

“I _meant_ for you to teach my son and I _meant_ for you to protect him where I couldn’t,” 

Tension strung like a wire around his words, and its cruel edge strikes home.

“You have failed on both accounts.”

Somehow, you are not surprised when the smack of flesh hitting flesh echoes out, and even less by the rapid steps drawing away from your shelter in unmitigated anger.

From beneath you, your father’s low curses follow before he, too, walks away.

Only your curious friend is there to see the considering frown of your mouth, having relocated to the relative shelter at the crook of your neck in answer to the growing tension.

With careful fingers, you smooth his ruffled feathers back, reaching for the serene state you had been in but a few minutes ago only to feel it slipping from your fingers, leaving only smoke and the stinging burn of flames in its wake.

Just like the ones that blew high and molten in your father’s chest, you consider warily. The old ways of the mountain never deal well with heat after all, and it is probably the reason why he never even suspected your presence, he who should by right be even closer to the trees that you are.

Sediments and intention, their fine powder at the bottom of your lungs, still and clear. The sleepy murmur of leaves and their dreaming fruits. The chorus of nature’s breath, dark and deep.

You hold it carefully in the wings of your ribcage and blow, delicate as its hollow bones.

The whistle that escapes your lips is the clearest you’ve managed yet.

***

After, everything is different; because of course there is an _after_. 

It would be foolish to think otherwise, especially with the tremors of their latest clash still shaking the ground, the landscape of carefully-tended avoidance reshaped by the tectonic shift in their relationship.

It begins like this:

The following day, when you report for your morning lesson, Yorrick is already there, waiting in the middle of the clearing you had claimed as your own.

Briefly, you feel more than see his eyes settle on your fresh bandages, their path tracing a line of fire along the line of your arm until the phantom sensation of pin-and-needles fills it and you have to stop yourself from fidgeting.

And then, strangely, impossibly, the flicker of contrition you had spied at your first meeting makes it appearance once again, this time settling at the corner of his mouth, tugging it down in an oddly neutral expression.

“First,” he begins as he usually does, and you feel yourself settle down at the return to your usual routine, ungainly as it may be, “I owe you an apology.”

Only for your calm to shatter once again.

Apologies? From _Yorrick_? 

Your shock must be apparent to him, for his contrition blooms across his face, bright and startling, morphing his features in an odd tableau of guilt and regret, both of which sit oddly on a face that you’d only seen laugh or smile until now. 

You don’t get to contemplate it for long however, before he sinks into a strangely formal half-bow, the likes of which you’d only seen used by or around nobles until now.

“You were injured because of my own ineptitude and for this, I would ask your forgiveness,” 

Thrown out by this uncharacteristic behavior, you barely manage to gather your wits enough to answer.

“Y-you shouldn’t apologize, it was my own fault for not listening well enough,” you manage to say, crushing your tentative stutter under a flare of tempter at your own break in character.

At this, he raises from his half-bow only to turn a frown your way, the spark returned to his face and the regret chased by annoyance. You are oddly relieved at seeing it, yet too thrown to realize how he made sure not to interrupt you, not as he would have but a few days ago.

“Last time I checked, li—kid,” a flicker of tempter at his own slip chase the rest of the guilt away, leaving only his piercing eyes to cut through to your very soul, “I was the adult in the equation. Moreover, you are my student, and it’s my role to keep such things from happening.”

You are certain you do not imagine his emphasis on the word _student_.

“ _Tilmīd,”_ you hear yourself say from miles away, your magpie-mind stripping memories from bone and picking it apart until it comes out a mirror of Yorrick’s in those snatched moments under an oak tree.

“How did you—“ he starts before stopping himself with a rueful shake of his head, “Seems like I was the one who needed to be more careful this time.”

The anger you had expected never comes, and instead a confused wonder suffuses his face as he looks at you, like he’s only now seeing you for the first time, stripped away, a flower brought out of the shadows and allowed to bloom.

“Well done,” he tells you instead with a smile, a slightly lopsided curve that lacks the fangs of his usual baring of teeth. Suddenly, you can almost see him five, ten, even thirty years younger, smiling in such a way at someone else, almost like he is…

_Proud,_ a little voice grasps your floundering train of voice and finishes it, annoyed and strangely fond at the same time, _he’s proud of you, you silly child._

“Now,” he tells you, back to his usual self but for the slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes, “let’s go over the movements once again…”

This is how it begins: with a smile and words of praise, with a look that you had only seen on your father’s face right until that moment.

And your father—well, your father has weathered worse than this, and so he merely waits, hidden in the trees’ shadow, watching, still. Waiting, always.

_Moonglass and spiderwing, to outlast the most deathless things._

That night, when he lays you to bed, he does not leave and settle instead at your side, his wide hand covering your brow as he waits for you to fall asleep. His voice, you notice sleepily, is deep and clear, a lullaby to lull you down to the deep.

That night, you dream of a misty clearing filled with blooms of all kinds, gently swaying to the sounds of a stream just out of sight.

You wake up smiling.

***

Afterward, you settle, bones shifting and grinding like the house you’ve never lived in, wood growing and shrinking on its foundations until everything falls in its proper place.

Your mornings remain Yorrick’s, but your evenings are Jeralt’s unless there is fighting to be done.

Blades and songs, steel and wood, you move from one to the other seamlessly, walking the tightrope of your arrangements with the same grace as you did Yorrick’s when he taught you balance, hanging between two trees until you could move as easily on as off the ground.

But that is not all you learn.

The first time you manage to accurately predict the winner of a game of cards, lost in the push and pull of a nameless tavern and anchored only by Yorrick’s presence at your side, he flashes that same proud smile at you, there and gone in a flash. The phantom imprint of his hand on your shoulder keeps you warm throughout the day.

If you were walking before, now you _soar_.

The bow you get an intimate understanding of for all that you do not care for it, preferring instead the closeness of swords and daggers to its yawning distance. You are a creature of feeling for all that they barely breach the surface, and you’d see your enemies dead by your hand, or not all.

Instead of being bothered by the plainness with which you address death and its eventual coming by your hand, Yorrick laughs, a scratchy and inelegant sound made lovely by its sole genuineness.

“You’re truly your father’s child, _habibi_ ” he tells you with something approaching fondness, his eyes warm and alive with good humor, “He never cared much for the bow either.”

Just as your father reveals himself in unexpectant silence, Yorrick shows his true colors with laughter, but only when unrestrained. Its affected and carefully modulated sibling is but a trap to ensnare the unwary, just like those who only see the color of his skin or the wrinkles around his eyes and dismiss him out of habit.

“Those,” he tells you with a conspiratorial wink, “are the easiest marks, and generally not worth the air they breathe, mark my words.”

You _were_ right, those many moons ago when you recognized Yorrick as deadly, but for the wrong reasons.

Now that whatever compunctions he had about teaching you are gone, you find yourself lost in the whirlwind of activity he leaves in his wake, so unlike the slow and ponderous pace your father keeps. It would be so easy to lose yourself in all that he shows you were your heart not carved from stone.

_Were he a bird, he’d be a goldenthroat_ , you think fondly as you watch him “demonstrate the real and proper way to rob nobles blind” from your seat in a nearby tree, Jeralt busy negotiating deeper in the village you’d stopped at for the week.

He huffs in laughter when you tell him so, a few hours later, hands wrapped around a golden-brown pastry filled with strawberries, a treat made even sweeter by knowing he’d lightened overfilled purses in doing so.

“Nay,” he tells you as you meander through town, a well-deserved break after you’d finally managed a three bullseyes in a row with the throwing knives he’d had comissioned in your name. “Were I a bird, it’d be a dove.”

“Not an eagle?” you ask him curiously, referring of course to his near-preternatural sight and his even more astounding ability with a bow.

“Yūnus,” he answers instead, laughter now but a spark in his eyes, drowned by nostalgia and lost in the distance, “for a bevy of them took flight when I learned of you.”

Yū-nus. Yor-rick. That night, before you go to sleep, you think of names. Do you lose something with a name, or is it but something superfluous, an added layer to your core like mother-of-pearl building around an essential spark.

Looking at Yūnus - you roll the name in your mouth, feels its bite like beating wings against your palate - you think it might be both, and neither, and some unknown part of you grieves for this ambiguity.

By-leth. Je-ralt. Two syllables, yet so different. You have another name, you know, this one chosen by your father but kept close to his chest until the moment you can claim it, yell it to the mountains and hear it said back: _name-taking_ , they call it in your father’s language; a chieftain’s right, and yours, if you wish it so.

Your father’s grave face is opaque as he offers you this, as awkward and hesitant as the time he pressed his first handmade gifts in your hands.

_An oak’s endurance; a willow’s patience,_ you sing to yourself as you ponder this decision, lost in the semi-light of your tent.

They snatch you up when you least expect it, and the reason behind Yūnus’ summons come too late to make a difference.

“Let us see how the False Prophet’s dog fares with his most precious possession gone.”

***

You—you should move. 

You should test your bonds, or survey your surroundings or get your captors to reveal something; _anything_. All of Yūnus’ lessons swirl in your mind like so much fog but you can’t bring yourself to—you _can’t._

Your lungs struggle to push air through your prone body, lying on the cold metal of the room you were shoved in after the illness of feeling your bones break and shift in quick succession settles in your stomach.

_Something’s wrong_ , you barely manage to think, feeling a terrible weariness settle deep inside of you, the constant thrum of your pulse thin and thready against the shining links of the chains around your wrists. In your chest, a giant hand tightens, and your ribcage creaks under its grip.

Even moving feels too terrible a strain to afford, and so you only lie there, weak and useless. Around you, an unseen source of light basks the walls of your prison in prismatic hues, cold purples and arctic greens, a mimicry of the auroras you had the chance to see once, lost in the wilderness at the very north of the Kingdom.

You don’t know how long you spend there, watching the colors blend and melt into each other with bleary eyes, trying fruitlessly to keep your rising sickness at bay.

Through it all, however, the gears of your mind keep turning, listlessly moving from one possible cause to the next, up and down a list of possible plants and poisons in a vain attempt to guard itself from giving in to the gnawing coldness at your breast.

From far, far away, you hear the tumble of a well-oiled lock disengaging and force your head to the side, peering through the curtain of pale hair obscuring your vision like a crest of seafoam on a dark sea.

_You’re not too far gone for this_ , you think; hope with the last spark glowing red and gold in your chest.

You barely manage to make out a pair of dark boots covered by sweeping robes before your heart seizes and your fangs spring from your gums, slick with venom.

_It hurts_ , you cry out in the depths of your mind, struggling against your own body’s revulsion at whoever just stepped foot in your cell. Against the floor, you spine arches like it’s trying to rip itself out of your body and phantom twinges jolt your shoulders, ungainly and far too small for the way they are begging to fold.

Through your silent tears, you see a bone-pale face lean down over you, vulture-consideration in the inhuman tilt of their head and their wide, unseeing eyes peering straight through you. You feel more than see the way their stare touches your tangled hair, your pale eyes, your curved fangs stained red.

“Who would have thought,” they say with sibilant amusement, delicately kneeling down at your side, “that we would meet again like this ?”

“Who…” you croak out through the copper taste on your tongue, “are you?”

“Do not concern yourself with such trifles, Fell Star,” they answer with relish, their black tongue gleaming in the low light, jubilation folded at the corner of their eyes.

_Fell Star_ , you think with difficulty? You don’t—

They slide a hand through your hair, and you nearly black out, the sensitive skin at the back of your neck itching with the desire to rip itself out and away from such a grip.

“Such lovely hair you have,” they continue with mock-gentleness, ignoring your attempts at drawing away, “I must admit, this color suits you wonderfully.”

So saying, they carefully gather your hair in their hands, patiently untangling them strand by strand, uncaring of the tears clumping your lashes together. Then, impossibly, they start to _braid it,_ and that simple intimate intact is nearly enough for you to force your limbs to cooperate.

_Not yet, not yet_ , Yūnus whispers in your mind, eyes red as blood, hair white as bone, _wait until the last moment._

You let your eyes close and fold your fangs back, feigning unconsciousness, sickness, wrongness; all of the terrible things that howl in your blood for release.

“Now then,” they break the silence once your hair is to their liking, its weight long and heavy against the ground, “let us see how your guardian appreciates our little...present.”

Copper fills your mouth when you hear the glide of a blade out of its sheath, and your fingers dig into your legs with all the strength of your desperation. 

But you must not move, _you mustn’t_ and so you won’t, because this is what you have chosen:

_Moonglass and spiderwing, to outlast the most deathless things._

_Hush, habibi, hush; ‘tis nothing but flesh, nothing but blood. Breathe through it._

Still, the urge to cry, unwanted and unfamiliar, tighten around your lungs when your head abruptly feels much lighter.

On the ground, your braid coils like an headless snake, and your captor’s amusement _burns_.

You do not open your eyes.

***

When they are finally gone, you push past your exhaustion and heartsickness, your rage clasped around your throat like a collar of salt and iron.

Without, you are just a boy. With it, you are indestructible. 

You think, _my mother named me for a lord of hell._

You think, _my father carved me from wood and steel._

You think, _I beheld death and did not flinch._

With a great heave, you pull your legs under you until you are sitting down. Then, with nary a tremble, you pull your hands apart, and just as Yūnus showed you, you put a foot on the taunt chain between your hands, and you _push_.

A blinding moment of pain, and your left hand slides free, slippery with blood, bent and warped but unchained, and that is the most important part.

You get up, back straight, spine unbroken under the weight of the sky on your shoulders.

***

Looking at the archbishop, Byleth does not know what awaits him.

What does she want, he thinks, looking at her pale green eyes, hungrily trained on his.

At his side, his father is marble, steel; untouchable and unknowable; but his hand, Byleth notices, is clenched at his side like he is ready for a fight, ready and willing to take on the whole faith if need be.

A trap perhaps. A threat, maybe.

His hands burn.

***

**Author's Note:**

> another fic added to the pile and _why do i keep doing this to myself_. oh well, that's fulfilling my need for jeralt and byleth's backstories so there is that. and you better believe i'm throwing in some cute family moments as well. i also had to come for language drift theory for this fic and i'm still not over it. why do the names in fe3h have to be all over the place???? also, please tell me if you notice mistakes in the irish or arabic because i speak neither of those. anyway, hope you enjoy, and see you next time!


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